Comment by skydhash
11 hours ago
> Stakeholders will only give you requirements after they see the prototype.
That’s very much incorrect and sounds like someone who love building more than communicating. Even without a prototype, users and other consumers will be able to explain their problems. It may not use the same metaphor map that you’re used to. But it’s very much a description of the problem space.
Once you design a prototype, what you will get is feedback about the solution you’ve designed, not the raw problem. If you’ve not listened well in the first place you may be well off the mark, and have to work harder to correct things.
Even if your story, the junior would do way less work by asking the master what he intends to do with the piece of work instead of focusing on the rock itself.
whether the hypothesis originates at the users or in your guess for the users is irrelevant in that they're both hypotheses with no certain outcome until trial.
They are. But engineering is about minimizing costs in solving a problem while ensuring requirements are met. Not worrying about costs is not engineering. It's either a research project (where you want to know if something is possible) or playing around.
The cost of prototyping has dropped so much due to LLMs and coding agents that it basically always makes sense to prototype something to elicit feedback, just as part of the requirements gathering process. E.g. if you can spend $50 to understand something that will save you two weeks of effort, wouldn't you do that? That's the sort of dynamic I'm talking about.
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